


losing victory

by willthrowhands



Series: therefore, elsewhere [2]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: ... that's not much better lol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, anyway i made this sad on purpose enjoy, don't worry about the major character death tag! all the deaths only happen in the beginning!, i originally wrote this before the 6th???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:55:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28632096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willthrowhands/pseuds/willthrowhands
Summary: if you take away the protagonists, what is the story?(aka: a series of epilogues in the form of an aftermath of one possible ending.)
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Technoblade & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit
Series: therefore, elsewhere [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2098614
Comments: 18
Kudos: 187





	losing victory

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! this fic is kind of more or less a test run for the events of the 6th... i wanted to write more about the 5th and 6th but i kinda ended up with this brainrot instead lol... so if i ever get that 5th/6th fic out im probably going to Snatch a bunch of lines from this fic. haha.... is that plagiarism? can you plagiarise yourself? hmmm
> 
> i uh... also wrote this originally before the 6th? somethings i didnt change and it kinda played the same lol am i Big Brained or what... anyway this is a lot shorter than what i usually write but im too lazy to change anything

**Tubbo & Tommy**

Nobody shows up, and he panics at first, but slowly, he puts the pieces of what he already knew, and he sighs as he armors up. With yesterday, he had done his best to rally everyone under the banner of Doomsday ( _Niki glares at him, and she opens her mouth, and she spreads doubt. After all, hadn’t he done this before? Hadn’t they played this song and dance before? Hadn’t Tommy roped them along, around him like armor, and let them all take the blow? These are the words of a woman tired of being spoken over, over being silent to the action, to having watched it all- because in the end, she was promised, and they promised her, and she got nothing._

_Loudly, Fundy agrees. What had anyone ever done for him, when he’d done everything for everyone? Why wasn’t he loved by anyone he’d ever reached out to, left on the altar on what had been his happiest day, giving his father his hardest efforts only to be looked at with those mad mad eyes and silently scorned, when in even in death his father had treated him the same way, when his own grandfather only ever sided with his favoured son, when he had nothing and no one, and no one and nothing ever had him. Why would he side with Tommy, Tommy, who ran with his own fire, his own ego, who’d been helped and cared for by the very people he desired the same from?_

_Quackity, on his horse, his eyes dark, whispering, you made a mess of this place and so did i, i am tired of fighting battles i know i will not win, and l’manberg isn’t the same anymore maybe it’s not worth dying for now-_ ), and Tommy knows it’s somewhat his fault. He can’t help but feel a little angry, here, lying on the ground, that everyone chose _now_ to blame him. Now, when he needed their help the most, but a part of him, the part of him that had been beaten and battered on the shores of Logsteadshire, whispered that _you deserve it, you’re horrible to everyone and you destroy everything you touch. dream is going to hold your leash forever and you will let him because you are stupid in the way that matters most, because you give value to things that are easily taken away and you’re not strong enough to protect them._ But mostly, he’s tired of people designating blame without understanding and dishing out punishment unproportionally, but there’s nothing he can do about it now. It didn’t matter in the end, because it didn’t matter if it were two people or twenty - L’manberg has been fated to ruin since the first time it faced its destruction at the hands.

Techno had often preached the warnings Greek myths often held within their stories, and the thing about stories is that the heroes usually win (but not in greek ones, ironically). The villain is defeated, the hero gets the girl, and life moves on from that point. Tommy is no hero but he is good-hearted, and the good-hearted don’t win prizes, and so, he loses. Dream is most definitely a villain, not because his intentions were evil but because his actions were, and he wins in the end. Now, he can only hope Dream’s karma comes in the form of what is left, because what’s left of the people isn’t enough to do it for them, and now, their suffering will go without reprisal. 

Now, as the smoke rises from the craters, the crackling from a fire in the distance, a hole in the ground greater than it’s ever been before, L’Manberg has witnessed its end. The end of its symphony. Wilbur started it, Techno ended it, and all Tommy wanted was the music. Now, there is no music. Only silence.

He shifts his head a little, to the side, to look at Tubbo, who lay beside him in the rubble. He felt a warmth pool from underneath him, and now, he knows his story ends here, too. Now, his human symphony concludes abruptly, his own orchestra falling silent, his percussion heartbeat playing until the last. 

In the end, the discs meant everything and nothing, because they gave the discs meaning because they were _their_ discs, _their_ music. The discs matter because there were only two of them, like the two of them: Tommy and Tubbo. The discs stopped mattering the moment they realised that they were the music: Cat and Melloi, the upbeat, quirky melody and the slow, mature waltz, and sometimes they switch, but a dance needs a partner, and they needed each other.

Once, Dream had sought to tear them apart. Once, Dream had. 

(“You have three days.”

“The discs are all the matter!”

“Please escort Tommyinnit out of my country.”

“You’re a shit friend!”

“The discs matter more than you ever did!”

“I really am the worst, aren’t I?”)

Once, Dream had separated them, and from Tommy & Tubbo, they became Tommy and Tubbo, and they had fallen apart, separately, individually. Once, Dream had torn them apart, but now, they are together: the world’s worst president and the world’s worst friend, and nobody can separate them now.

The music of their friendship is in the way it is silent, red and green and red intertwined on the battlefield of what had once been everything at all. They should’ve left it all behind the moment L’manberg fell apart, the moment Wilbur had pressed the button, because they had contemplated it - because they were tired of fighting. They could’ve, could’ve run away, just the two of them in the quiet expanse of the world, but they didn’t. But now, they are together, and even if their stories end here, even if the music quietens here, they have each other and that’s all they need.

To the end, together, he whispers, and reaches for Tubbo. Tubbo is cold now, but his fingers still grasp at Tommy’s, and Tommy knows they don’t have much time left.

They hold hands up until the end.

  
  
  
  


**Quackity & Ranboo**

Quackity and Ranboo are, ironically, ultimately the two sides of the coin that L’manberg was once. Quackity is a lawfully driven man - because if a government could govern, the people obeyed, and there was peace in the way you had a system to regulate it. Because if you were powerful, because if you had order, you had peace in the form of stability. Quackity had joined L’manberg the country, and received nothing of it.

Ranboo, on the other hand, was a heart-driven man. He had joined as the government had started to crumble (whatever it was, that was taped together, anyway), and all of his loyalties relied on other people. He wasn’t loyal, though, not in the way Quackity had defined ‘loyalty’ - because loyalty meant whatever side you were on, you gave it your all, and you were always justified in your choices. Ranboo’s loyalty was in the people, instead, and loyalty meant that you helped them, no matter what. Because if you were loyal to people, you had a family, and you had peace in the form of stability. Ranboo had joined L’manberg the family, and received nothing of it.

In the end, L’manberg was neither of those. Was it the land, that they had cherished, that they had been fighting for? Was it the people, that they had loved, that they had been fighting for? Neither of these are true, in the way that the land had been changing constantly under their hands, the moment they claimed it there, in the way the people were so disconnected, different lands, different homes, spanning far distances from it. 

What was L’manberg for, then? Maybe it was the memories they cherished, but there weren’t many good ones. Just the two, and even then, those memories have been tarnished from time and understanding. The only few who even remotely held onto those ideals were the ghost who literally couldn’t remember more than it, and the two boys he had loved, once. See where it took them.

Quackity only has order, and Ranboo only wants family, and neither of them get what they wanted. But Ranboo is an ideal, and Quackity believes in reality, but Quackity isn’t a fighting man, and Quackity is tired of fighting for what he doesn’t get to have. It’s why he separates himself from L’manberg, in a fight for his own ideals and desire from the land, but Quackity’s words have always been his weapon of choice, and on the other end of the sword, words mean nothing.

In the end, Quackity doesn’t get what he wants, and Ranboo is left to keep fighting for it.

  
  
  
  


**Niki**

Niki doesn’t love L’manberg. She’s not sure she ever did, because all she was there for, were the people in it, but the people in it loved it, and so she loved it too. But now, she watches an endless loop of conflict, with the same person leading it all again. It’s Tommy vs. Dream, because it’s always been, but now he is asking them to do the same. They have “done the same” before, too: do they not remember every other war? It’s always the same premise. The same fight. The same two people.

“You did it, didn’t you!?” She exclaims, but she’s not entirely talking about the community house at this point. Tommy’s explanations are half-out his mouth, but also half-unexplained, and she’s not entirely sure what had happened in his exile, but he’s been exiled before, and that doesn’t excuse what he’d done then, to George. It doesn’t excuse him, now, because whatever he’s trying to tell her has the same premise as before: Tommy vs. Dream, and she’s getting sick of watching the people she loves rip themselves apart for meaningless fighting. She is a woman whose voice has often gone unheard, and Cassandra had begged her listeners to believe her, but Niki is getting real tired of talking. 

Actions speak louder than words, and words go unheard, so she takes a flaming torch to the last remnant of what had been, and sets it aflame. 

This too, goes unheard, because there is no one left to watch. 

Later, Niki waits for stragglers back at her home, for those she still had space for those who’d run, who’d had shared her experiences, but no one shows up, because no one is left to come. 

It’s quieter now.

  
  
  
  


**Eret**

Eret doesn’t have much to say, anymore. They find themself picking through the rubble, and finding nothing but old memories - here, a uniform that had tipped out of a box, while the building had been crumbling, there, a book from a library of recorded history.

The first betrayer who had sought the destruction of this place, returning to defend it only to find it destroyed, the ultimate irony - but Eret hadn’t ever stopped thinking about that line. Because it had become true in some sense - the moment they’d said that, the line had dictated the fate of the country every moment after, in the way they lived by it, a reminder, in the way the lived by it, a warning, in the way they twisted it to give themselves hope, or to ensure the end. 

In the end, it never was meant to be. They wish it was, though.

  
  
  


**Phil & Techno & Ghostbur**

Techno spends his days back at the arctic, once it had been over. He had done his part, he had exacted his absolute reciprocity from the country that had eaten away at Wilbur, from the country that had chained Phil and sent an anvil down on his head. L’manberg was a poison: it had the same decaying effect that his Withers had, slowly breaking down the people who attached themselves to it. They never should have reformed the same systems they saw break down - what, did they think they could repair it? Because if they did, they failed to see the point, and he was never a traitor to any of them, when his intentions were clear and out in the open, and he doesn’t understand why they futilely try to paint him that way.

It wasn’t that he hated them, no - he just needed them to get away from the country. He needed to break those ties, because the government grants power, and power corrupts, and absolute power absolutely corrupts. He had seen it through Tubbo, the most unassuming of the three presidents, in the way he was drained dry of his power and the corruption spread to the other members of his cabinet. Because he’d seen what it’d done to WIlbur, pulling him by the loose thread on his sweater, and unraveling until there had been nothing left but a shell of a man begging for escape in the form of a sword in his stomach. And if they didn’t understand that they caused their own conflicts defending worthless treasure, then he’d just have to give them the ground to start from.

He looks out the window. The stars are bright, vivid specks of light that smatter the night sky. The stars are more visible than they’ve ever been before, with that tower standing in between the view and his window. Phil had taken it a while back, when he had explained where Tommy had gone. They had joked about removing the “traitor tower”, and they didn’t talk about the hole in their backs from the knife wound his absence brought. But Tommy made his choice, and Techno would hold him accountable for it if no one else did. And Tommy called him the betrayer, when he’d made his intentions nothing but transparent, and Tommy had shouted at him, but his words held no water, and so Techno shrugged them off, retaliating with his own, and it was a battle of miscommunication.

In the end, it’s not Techno who kills Tommy. It’s actually unclear who does, but it doesn’t matter, because in the end, Tommy remains dead. Tommy doesn’t die like Theseus, because he dies in a battle sought by himself, doesn’t die betrayed because there is no one to betray him, doesn’t die in front of those who’d blindly followed his fighting words because no one to believe in him, doesn’t die by anything but his own hand.

He looks out the window, and finds himself missing the accursed cobblestone structure. No one would ever build another like it again, on the server, and all of the ones like it had been destroyed in the chaos, and so, all traces of its builder had been wiped off the map in a quite literal manner. He misses the tower, in the way he misses the noise, in the way he feels the absence. (eventually, he understands it a little, now, why the land of L’manberg had been so important to the people, why it had been only important to two of the people up until the end. because it was a place that had been home once, that had noise once, and now there is not even a remnant of that.)

(As for Ghostbur… Ghostbur had disappeared, once the explosions had settled. Ghostbur disappears, because he really only stayed for his son, Techno and Tommy, for L’manberg, because he had left them all behind with a hole in their heart that wouldn’t mend, in a land that had become his haunting place. But Tommy was the only one who needed him, because Tommy couldn’t move on from his loss, and it showed in the conflict he had wrought. Now, Tommy doesn’t need him anymore, and neither does his son, and Techno can take care of himself, and L’Manberg, its lands and the people who’d once held its ideals no longer live, so he leaves. They’re all waiting for him elsewhere, anyway.)

  
  


Phil tries his best to piece them together, but they only have two, and between the two of them, it’s not enough to make them whole. It never will be.

(maybe one day you’ll understand)

  
  
  


**(Dream &) Sapnap**

Dream doesn’t linger at the sight, like Sapnap does, when it’s over. He leaves, while Sapnap stays, stares, and he feels uncomfortable. Dream was his oldest friend, and Sapnap couldn’t claim morality in the form of peace, because he wasn’t known for his peaceful actions. But something made him feel awful, looking over the ruins and wreckage, because he knew, those who they hadn’t seen stagger away from the battle, were buried under it, unmoving and cold, and they’d never move again.

It’s the same uncomfortable feeling that he had, when he had watched Dream take Tommy apart in Logsteadshire, the way he had looked away, as if looking away would stop it from happening. He remembers coming through the nether portal, with a photograph in hand, a little memento of what Tommy couldn’t have anymore, and the way he found Dream and Tommy on the ledge, with Tommy leaning forward. His heart jumped in his mouth, and he watched, frozen, as Dream harshly yanked him from the edge, twice, and then watched Tommy’s back as he retreated. 

Then, because he was a coward in the manner of relationships, because this wasn’t a battle he could fight, nor one he particularly wanted to, he gave Tommy the photo, and sought to never return to the place. Dream had asked him, briefly, if he wanted to tag along. He didn’t ask again for weeks, and when Sapnap had prompted, he was told: oh, you you don’t need to. Then, a couple days later, Tubbo announces Tommy’s funeral date.

The devil was in the details, and he didn’t want to look. Tommy had confronted him the day before, quietly, like he’d been in Logsteadshire, with Mars in his hands and a plea on his lips, with _we started this, we end this_ and one line of _Dream’s a real fucked-up bastard, he-he, oh, you, never mind, the point is-_ And even though he’d agreed to side with them, his hands gripping the sides of the bucket, and even though he tried not to think about it, he knew what that one line entailed, because he had lived a day in it and never came back. He remembers that.

He remembers further than that. He remembers asking Dream if he ever cared about them, about him, about George, and the hesitation had spelled out what he already knew. He remembers further than that - he remembers Dream shouting at the L’manberg cabinet, having no care for anything on the server. He remembers further than that - he remembers Tommy holding Mars, when he had no right to, because the one person who had it was the one person who’d never give it up without it being a willing choice, and Dream would never do that to him, right?

Dream would never do that to him, right?

But if Dream could do that to Tommy, if he could do that to Tubbo, he could do it to any one else. Who’s to stop him from doing it to Sapnap, too?

So he does what he does best: avoids Dream, in the aftermath of the destruction. He does this in little steps, having always found something to do - because now, _now_ , there was no one else left. Tommy had died, Tubbo had died, and everyone else had disappeared, and now it really was just Dream and Sapnap and George, and George had been passive to it all, but Sapnap felt the silence louder than them both, and so, he occupied himself with things instead of people for once. He takes it a step forward: he packs his bags. He heard Niki had been building a base for survivors, far from the graveyard that L’manberg had become, and now the space between him and George and Dream had become a graveyard, too.

Dream eventually confronts him. He leans in the doorway, while Sapnap had been crafting tools, and asks the question. 

He pauses. “Because…”

Because you could do that, to someone. Because you could do that to anyone. Because you could do that to me. Because I can’t tell if you’re lying about your motives, because your actions are undefined and your intentions unclear, and you never clarify anything with your words, but you have many to say. Because there is a prison you built under the guise of family, but everyone is dead or far gone and it goes unused, left to gather spiderwebs and dust. Because Sam had come by, dropped the keys in your hand, and told you to never ask him of anything, again. Because you were the next Wilbur, the next Schlatt, and you didn’t stop, and I can’t trust you like that. Because I have an answer to this question, and you’re not going to like it, but I’m not staying anymore. Nobody stays for you anyway, because you seem so intent on driving us all away. Because maybe you deserve it.

He thinks about the untouched graveyard, miles off. “Because I’m not going to let you bury me too.”

There is nobody else, anyway, who would've avenged Sapnap now. The reason for that stands behind him, and Dream has no one, because his “family” is half buried and all far, far away. And so he leaves, and Dream is alone.

  
  


**Dream &**

Dream gets his monkey’s paw wish: he has what he asked for, in the end, but nothing he wanted. He wins the battle and he wins the war. There is victory in default. It is entertaining, while it lasts. And then the dust settles, and there is nothing left for him. Or sure, he could chase coattails. Niki has a base somewhere but… it’s not the same. Eret had left, sometime long ago, their castle long abandoned. George had stopped caring. Sapnap had left him too. But the truth of the matter is, is there are no "protagonists" left to antagonise, because the fun ended the moment he'd broken his toys and realised they were people.

He remembers what he told Punz: all he wanted was the family, the server back to the old days, no countries, no divisors, no allegences. He's not sure how much of it was lies. The fact of the matter remains this: there _is_ a family somewhere, in the afterwards, but here, now, he must bury them in the rubble of their consequences, and it is so, so quiet.

He plays the music discs he’d won from tormenting the very owners until they had broken apart, and then broken themselves. He plays them, and lets them run until their staticky silent ends.

He never plays them again.

The silence resonates.

**Author's Note:**

> lemme know what you think! what did you like? any lines? them comments fuel my ideas <3


End file.
